arch if the inhabitants
of the city had been aware of the terrible tragedy which had just been
enacted within the walls of the Inquisition can never be known, possibly
it might have resulted in a still more terrible tragedy in the streets,
with far-reaching results upon the city itself, but Saint Leger believed
that he had taken every possible precaution against such an occurrence.

As events proved, however, there was one precaution which he had omitted
to take; he should have insisted upon the arrest by the alcalde of Don
Manuel Rebiera, the acting Commandant, upon that individual's display of
hostility at the termination of their interview with him; and this
George had not done. Now, Don Manuel was both a bigoted Catholic and a
Government official. He was one of those who held that the Church--and
in his case the term included every individual belonging to the Church--
could do no wrong; even the atrocities of the Inquisition, which many
devout Catholics secretly reprobated, were to him perfectly justifiable,
and the institution itself as sacred as the cathedral; and the suspicion
aroused within him by George's question as to the whereabouts of the
building--that this little band of autocratic, domineering heretics
meditated an invasion of its sacred precincts, possibly with the
intention of perpetrating some act of violence therein, and in any case
desecrating it by their intrusion--stirred his fanatical religious
rancour to boiling point, while the fact that those same heretics held
the town--a possession of his Most Catholic Majesty--at their mercy, was
not only as great an offence from his patriotic point of view, but he
also felt that it inflicted a deep stain upon his honour as a Spanish
soldier, which he was resolved to wipe out, if possible.

These feelings he had wit enough to understand he must conceal from
George and the alcalde, and he contrived to do so pretty successfully;
but the effort only caused them to gall and rankle the more intolerably,
and when, at the termination of his interview with them, he quitted
their presence with a certain scarcely veiled hint of insolence in his
manner, he was in the throes of a perfect frenzy of anger and
humiliation; in the precise frame of mind, in fact, as that of the man
who, forgetting everything but his own grievances, is ready to commit
any crime, however atrocious, in order to avenge himself and salve his
wounded feelings. Too often, unhappily, reflection